Love is Here. Love is Now.

Love is here. Love is now.

This is the song I picked as an introduction for our upcoming family camp (retreat). After several times having thoroughly listened to this song, I couldn’t help but wonder about the chorus, “love is here, love is now.“ I hear this phrase all the time from others, “Hey man, I would know God loved me if He would just do…” That’s the problem. What does God need to do to convince you of His love? Does He need to give you the man/woman of your dreams? Give you the easiest job in the world with a high paying rate? Give you straight A’s? I don’t know about you, but this is a dangerous game when we demand that God prove something that He’s already proven.

Romans 5:8 says, “God demonstrates His love in this; that while we were still sinners Christ died for us.” So if I’m feeling unloved or dissatisfied, then I MUST look to the Cross. “This is how we know what love is, Jesus Christ laid down his life for us.” (1 John 3:16a). No games, no tricks, just JESUS, and just His blood. Now take a step back. This means the duty of the Christian is no longer to work in order to earn God’s merit; Christ has already done that. And the new responsibility for those who are in Christ is to put all their effort, all their desire, and all of the work into simply RESTING in what Jesus has done for us. He demonstrates and proves his love one way; by suffering the wrath of God in our place. Over and over, it pains me when I meditate on this; my hands start to shake. Day in and day out, there was one sacrifice for all eternity.

What other proof do we need?

What act of love could go beyond that of the Son of God dying under the weight of our shame? The love we’re looking for is HERE. It’s now. It’s at the CROSS. 1^st John 4:10 says, “This is love: not that we love God, but that He loved us and gave His Son as a propitiation for our sins.” We already have what we seek, my brothers and sisters. And this is what we will fight our whole lives to BELIEVE.

I pray that by the end of the camp, people can walk away not just loving God, also believe that they themselves are LOVED.

Love is Here. Love is Now. Love is pouring from his hands, from his brows.

God Bless,
Wendell J.

Tags: Love

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 25th, 2009 at 2:45 pm and is filed under Devotions. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.